Hanscom - Language and Landscape

In Abram's book The Spell of the Sensuous, he talks about how oral language reflects or mimics the landscape and the wild life present in the environment. He states, "If we listen, first, to the sounds of an oral language--to the rhythms, tones, and inflections that play through the speech of an oral culture--we will likely find that these elements are attuned, in multiple and subtle ways, to the contour and scale of the local landscape, to the depth of its valleys or the open stretch of its distances, to the visual rhythms of the local topography" (Abram, 140). This is interesting to me because I have often thought that people's language was influenced exclusively by the way other people spoke. I have never thought of language being influenced by the land.

This phenomena reminds me of the creation story in Genesis. God spoke words and the earth was created. In the gospel of John, it says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through Him and all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made" (John 1:1-3). And in the book of Colossians, it reads, "He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together" (Colossians 1:17). The landscape that we see around us is being held together by Him and through Him. God is the Word, therefore, the land around us embodies the essence of the Word. I think it is reasonable to believe that our language is influenced by the landscape around us because the Word is the power holding us and the land together.

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